Abstract
This Research Based Thesis (RBT) for the award of an EdD is an autoethnographic piece of research which concerns my role as the Founding Dean of a new UK medical between the years of 2018 and 2023.Background: Opening a new medical school is not a common event in the UK, and little direct evidence about how best to lead endeavours such as this successfully has emerged from other schools that have recently opened. The current evidence is dispersed and disparate. It is highly likely that more new schools will open soon and that this will create new career opportunities for medical educators. Management theories and theories of change management are not always easy to situate in medical education because medical schools have a specific social, moral, professional and vocational purpose as well as a tertiary education purpose. A lot of what has been written by individual medical school leaders has been written in a personal capacity and is not grounded in a scholarly framework.
Methodology: I have used a theory of change leadership in education (Fullan, 2020) to provide the structure for this thesis and my autoethnographic method. I have captured several events which led to epiphanies in my understanding of change leadership and situated these in Fullan's theory. The research draws on a wide range of events and phenomena to reflect the scope of my role, and the large number of stakeholders (institutional and individual) with which I had to interact and incorporates a range of other theories relating to each phenomenon.
Results: The autoethnographic method resulted in new understandings and new perspectives of change leadership in medical education. I was able to compare my perspectives with established theory and build on this to arrive at new conclusions. The work offers a holistic analysis of many of the phenomena associated with opening a new medical school.
Discussion and Conclusions: This single-site, field study of an exceptional occurrence used an uncommon research method in leadership research and produced insights that are relevant for other, similar situations. Change leadership in education relies on successful social interactions as well as rigorous application of process and management approaches. Every leader’s behaviours are influenced by their own personal characteristics, and my methodology also allowed me to consider and contextualise this during the research. This RBT has produced novel insights into the journey of leadership involved with opening a new medical school and highlighted some of the biggest challenges that new medical school deans may face. Some of the successes may be applicable elsewhere, the mistakes I made may also offer opportunities from which others may learn.
| Date of Award | 1 Oct 2024 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Alan Cribb (Supervisor) & John Owens (Supervisor) |